Podcasting is becoming one of the most essential tools in your marketing mix. But just podcasting and not understanding the results from efforts can be very risky. Using analytics correctly allows you to focus your efforts, improve your show to align with the behaviors of your audience, and be more cost-effective with your marketing spending.
However, as well as looking at your marketing analytics, you also need to understand the analytics. What do the numbers mean and how can you use them to build your podcast brand?
In this article, we look at the key metrics, what they tell you, and how you can make improvements to help your podcast resonate with audiences.
Key Podcast Metrics to Track
There are several metrics to track, but you need to carefully think about your goals. For instance, if you’re looking to improve your sponsorship revenue, then you will need to focus on those statistics. But if you have no interest in sponsorship income as a major revenue stream,
then you might consider ignoring these statistics.
So carefully strategize what your podcast goals are for you. Then you can carefully look at these options.
Downloads & Streams
The first metric that many people refer to is the downloads and streams that they have. The problem is that these don’t always tell you the complete picture. The number of times that a show is watched can be an important metric, but it could be that there are 5 or 6 downloads from a single individual which can skew the data.
But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look at the figures. A sudden increase in downloads/streams could mean that you’re being found more by audiences. Or that your audience took a real interest in your episode’s topic.
Listeners & Unique Listeners
A more vital statistic is the number of listeners you have. There are two different statistics here: listeners and unique listeners. Listeners are about the number of times that all your episodes have been downloaded. Therefore, it tends to be very high and not very accurate. Unique listeners are about the number of people who are downloading episodes, which doesn’t count duplicates.
By knowing the number of unique audience members you have, you can see what audience retention rates are and how effective you are at keeping an audience.
Episode Retention Rate
The episode retention rate, or listen-through rate, isn’t about how much of your audience is coming back for another episode, it is more about how much of an episode is being heard by audiences. This is an interesting statistic because it determines how engaging your episode is.
A low retention rate means that your episodes probably aren’t interesting enough for your audience. A high retention rate indicates engaging content, while drop-off points to areas of the podcast that need improvement. For benchmarking, research has shown that a good market is about 50-70%, and those that are achieving more than 70% are performing above market expectations.
In contrast, YouTube has a slightly smaller retention rate at around 50-60%.
Subscriber Growth
It is one thing to get audiences to listen to one episode, but getting them to listen to multiple episodes is also important. There are several ways to do this, but without subscribing to your podcast, you’re going to struggle. That is why it is important to try and add a call-to-action in your podcast episodes to get people to subscribe to the show.
Then you can measure your subscriber growth statistics. Ideally, you want to see a growth of about 10% for your show. This is significantly different to YouTube where even those with fewer than 100 subscribers can expect just a 1% growth in subscribers.
Audience Demographics
There are several audience demographics that you can monitor which can help you build effective marketing campaigns. For instance, you can know the geographic location, age, gender, device usage, time of listening, occupation, income level, and more.
There are lots of excellent ways that you can collect this information, with systems being able to determine lots of audience data.
Listening Platforms
There are numerous listening platforms on which you can promote your show. And your show might not be as popular on certain platforms. For example, you might get good audience engagement on YouTube, but not have excellent promotion on Apple Podcasts.
By knowing this you can determine how to market your podcast and more.
Engagement & Reviews
Another option that you have to monitor is the engagement with your podcast episodes. For example, you can see how many comments, likes, shares, and reviews you get on your podcast episodes. The more you get, the higher the engagement rates you have on your website.
When you see a spike in your engagement or reviews, you should have a look at your episode and see what is different.
Monitoring Sponsorship Income
The next thing you need to consider is to monitor the sponsorship income. Tracking the sponsorship income is essential for determining future revenue trends and the effectiveness of your advertising deals. You can use analytics to measure conversation rates, listener engagement with sponsors, the impact on audience retention, and more.
Regularly reviewing sponsorship performance helps you to optimize your sponsorship packages, attract more lucrative deals, and even increase the number of deals that you have.
Social Media Reach
Social media is essential in today’s business world. There are numerous sites that you should be using for social media such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You need to check your follower counts, growth, engagement, and even how much traffic you’re gaining from the social media content.
You should look at this as a whole and on a platform level. Then you can determine what is the best distribution of your content.
Email Subscribers
Email marketing is essential for success. According to statistics, for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you’re going to see between a $36 and $44 return. And email marketing can be used for lots of different areas related to your podcast. For instance, you can use it to build revenue from your services/products. Or you can use it to direct people to the latest episodes.
Finally, you can use it to market your brand’s sponsors.
Seeing the growth of your podcast’s email marketing list can be very critical. You want to see significant, sustainable growth, but that can always be challenging.
Leveraging Podcast Analytics for Growth
Once you’ve collected the podcast analytical data, you can build ways to improve them. Here are several options that you might want to consider.
Optimize Content: When you have poor listener retention, you might need to adjust the episode format, reduce the time it runs, change the order of segments, and more.
Target Marketing Options: Use the listener demographics to improve the marketing efforts that you employ to drive people to your podcast.
Call-to-Actions: Get more people to subscribe to your mailing list, podcast, and more, by having a great call-to-action on your podcast episodes.
Experiment with Formats: You might want to test different styles, topics, and other guest features based on the listener’s preferences.
Improve Sponsorship Packages: If you notice that specific packages are working better, you can create new packages to improve sponsorship recruitment.
Strengthen Audience Connection: Use social media, email analytics, and platform data to refine your engagement strategies to help build a loyal listener base that can help you grow your show.
FAQs
How often should you monitor podcast analytics?
You should regularly do podcast analytics so you can see shifts in the trends and more. Set aside time every month to look at your podcast analytics.
Can a podcast production company help?
Yes, a podcast production company can help you look at the raw data that you’ve got and then make suggestions on your best chances to improve your statistics and show data.
How much time should you dedicate to your podcast analytics?
You should spend a couple of hours on your podcast analytics every month. This time should be spent collecting data and reviewing it.
Final Word: Understanding Your Podcast Analytics
When it comes to growing your podcast, analytics are critical. You must spend time looking at them, understanding what the raw data means, and pushing for ways to enhance them. Above is a brief overview of what you need to be looking at. But you might need the support of a professional podcast production agency.
Produce Your Podcast is a full-service podcast production, editing, and marketing agency specializing in helping brands launch, grow, and monetize successful podcasts that impact their bottom line. With 30+ years of experience in both broadcasting and business development brought to every project we work on, our team of experts is a reliable partner to help you achieve your goals with your show.
Click here to schedule a conversation with our team today and let’s bring your show to life!
